Hunt the Wumpus
Platform: TI-99/4A
Region: USA
Media: Cartridge
Controller: Joystick, Keyboard
Genre: Strategy - Text
Gametype: Licensed
Release Year: 1980
Developer: Texas Instruments
Publisher: Texas Instruments
Players: 1
Programmer: Kevin Kenney
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A mythical creature called a Wumpus is sleeping somewhere in a series of maze-like caves, and your goal is to hunt it down. The cave is dangerous, and in addition to the Wumpus there are bottomless pits and cave bats. Walking into a pit ends the game, encountering a bat will cause you to be relocated to a random location in the cave (which may or may not be safe), and walking into the same room as the Wumpus will cause it to wake up and eat you. To help figure out where these dangers are various cave rooms can provide clues. For example, finding blood splattered in the room means the Wumpus is near, or if you feel a breeze then a pit is near. From these clues you need to deduce the layout of the cave and the location of the Wumpus. If you think you know where the Wumpus is, you have one arrow to fire; a hit wins the game, but a miss means you are eaten by the Wumpus.

Hunt the Wumpus was originally a text based adventure written for mainframes, and this version maintains the same gameplay however graphical enhancements are added. During the game you have a top down view of the cave as you move from room to room with various colors used to indicate the clues. Depending on the difficulty level selected, the map will show you the entire cave that you have visited so far, or only the current room you are standing in. You may also select from several cave difficulty levels (this affects the complexity of the cave layout). When the game ends, you can optionally view the entire cave to see how close (or far) you came to winning.

Trivia:

In 1994, the International Obfuscated C Code Contest gave Don Dodson the "Most Obfuscated Packaging" award for his version of Hunt the Wumpus.

Google included their own version of this game in the releases of their instant messaging client Google Talk up to version 1.0.0.81. In the about screen, you can make out the very light text "play 23 21 13 16 21 19 . 7 1 13 5" against the background. Change the numbers according to their position in the alphabet and it reads "play wumpus.game".

Available only for a short time, you could add "wumpus.game@gmail.com" to your contact list and type "play" to start a game of Wumpus.

The first-ever IRC (Internet Relay Chat) bot was a 1989 script named "GM", written by Greg Lindahl to play Hunt the Wumpus with channel denizens through text input / output.

The original Hunt the Wumpus game (made in 1975 by Californian programmer Gregory Yob) was written in BASIC, and only had 50 lines of code. You can find a link to its source code in the related links section.

Gregory Yob created the original Hunt The Wumpus back in the 1970's before it made it's way to the TI-99/4A. His version of the game was completely text based, telling you when bats were near, which rooms you could go to, etc. 
For the TI-99/4A version, however, Kevin Kenney decided to implement graphics which in my opinion made the game a little more fun (especially being able to see the Wumpus display an evil grin after he devours you!).

This was Kevin Kenny's first title for the TI-99/4A. His other game, Tunnels of Doom, was released a year after Hunt The Wumpus and went on to become one of the most popular TI cartridges.   

Hunt The Wumpus, A-Maze-Ing, and Blasto were all initially going to be bundled on one cartridge. However, programmer Kevin Kenney took these games and added a bunch of extra features to them, turning them into viable stand alone cartridge products. In the end this was a great move by Kevin since all of them went on to become top sellers on the 99/4A system, bringing in more money than what TI would have gotten with an all-in-one watered down combo cartridge.

Play the Java based TI-99/4A version of Hunt The Wumpus on-line! It's a great remake with updated graphics and sound as well as a good way to try and slay that Wumpus right on your own PC.


http://www.mobygames.com/game/ti-994a/hunt-the-wumpus
